SPOTLIGHTwww.booklistreader.comdozens of dilapidated units on Milwaukee’sinfamous North Side, and Tobin, who runs atrailer park on the South Side. They’re in it tomake money, to be sure, butthey also have a tendency torent to those in need and tolook the other way. More of-ten than not, however, theyfind themselves hauling ten-ants to eviction court, andhere we meet eight families.Among them are Arleen, asingle mother dragging her two youngest sonsacross town in urgent search of a warm, safeplace; Scott, a drug addict desperate to crawlup from rock bottom; and Larraine, who losesall of her belongings when she’s evicted. Des-mond’s natural storytelling style easily movesfrom engaging narrative (at times a tad florid,particularly when describing events he was notpresent for) to straight reporting. He does amarvelous job telling these harrowing stories ofpeople who find themselves in bad situations,shining a light on how eviction sets people upto fail. He also makes the case that evictiondisproportionately affects women (and, worse,their children). This is essential reading foranyone interested in social justice, poverty, andfeminist issues, but its narrative nonfiction stylewill also draw general readers. —Rebecca Vnuk

The Fight to Vote.

By Michael Waldman.

Feb. 2016. 384p. Simon & Schuster, $28

(9781501116483). 324.6.

Waldman (The Second Amendment, 2014)
follows the American struggle over voting
rights from the 1787 Constitutional Convention to June 2013, when the U.S. Supreme
Court struck down key
provisions of the landmark
Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As Waldman makes clearin this important book, thefight to vote has been at theheart of U.S. history, as havethe countless debates overhow to expand democracyeven as “some fought to gain a voice in theirgovernment” while “others fought just as hardto silence them.” He discusses significant fig-ures in the battle, from Benjamin Franklin toAbraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass toLyndon Johnson. And he focuses on key devel-opments, including the passing of the FifteenthAmendment, which extended voting rights toblack men; the suffragist movement, whichgained the vote for women; the civil rightsmovement; and the Twenty-sixth Amendment,which lowered the voting age to 18. Waldmananalyzes Bush v. Gore and the Florida 2000recount “debacle” and also the controversialCitizens United case, in which the SupremeCourt allowed unlimited election spending bycorporations. In 2016, he notes, new restrictivevoting laws will be in effect in 14 states. Wald-man’s bracing account of voting rights andpolitical equality arrives right on time for the2016 presidential campaign. —June Sawyers

The Firebrand and the First Lady:Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt,

and the Struggle for Social Justice.

By Patricia Bell-Scott.

Feb. 2016. 464p. illus. Knopf, $30 (9780679446521).
973.917.

Eleanor Roosevelt, born to privilege, prosperity, and power, first crossed paths with Pauli

Murray, the granddaughter
of a slave struggling against
racism and poverty, in 1934
when the First Lady visited
an upstate New York facility for unemployed women.
Murray was in residence
after fleeing the Jim Crow
South to put herself through
college in Manhattan. Four years later, Murray sent the opening salvo in what became
a fervent correspondence that lasted until
Roosevelt’s death, as these two brilliant, courageous, committed trailblazers—both orphaned
young, taunted for their appearance, devoted
to reading and writing, boundlessly energetic,
and fiercely independent—joined forces to
fight for justice and equality. Bell-Scott meticulously chronicles their boundary-breaking
friendship, telling each remarkable woman’s
story within the context of the crises of the
times, from ongoing racial violence to WWII
and the vicious battle over school integration,
creating a sharply detailed and profoundly
illuminating narrative. Roosevelt’s heroic compassion and world-altering accomplishments
shine with fresh significance, while Murray’s
phenomenal life of “firsts” delivers one astonishment after another. A clarion writer and
seminal civil rights activist, a professor with a
doctorate in law and an Episcopalian priest,
Murray analyzed and protested every manifestation of discrimination she encountered based
on race, gender, and sexual orientation. Bell-Scott’s groundbreaking portrait of these two
tireless and innovative champions of human
dignity adds an essential and edifying facet to
American history. —Donna Seaman

Life without a Recipe.

By Diana Abu-Jaber.

Apr. 2016. 256p. Norton, $26.95 (9780393249095). 641.59.

“All grudges are softened by the approach
of dinner,” Arab American novelist Abu-Jaber
(Birds of Paradise, 2011) writes in her second
food-oriented memoir, following The Language of Baklava (2005). And in a family like
hers, dinner can’t come soon enough. With
a tenderness that never dips into nostalgia,
Abu-Jaber weaves together the stories of those
closest to her: a gregarious and food-obsessed
Jordanian father, a German grandmother who
trusts sugar and flour but remains suspicious of
men, three husbands, one treasured daughter,
and many friends and relatives. In ostensibly
a “memoir of food and family,” it is the family, rather than the food, that steals the show.

She describes her relationships with wonder-ful levity, but Abu-Jaber also allows space forcomplexity, conflict, and uncertainty. She of-fers us an intimate seat at her family table aswe watch her learn to navigate life on her ownterms, from a young girl to an adult strugglingto balance her independence with the needs ofher multicultural family. Abu-Jaber renders herrelationships to both food and family in rich,joyful detail. —Amanda Winterroth

YA: Abu-Jaber’s welcoming memoir of
family, food, and coming of age provides
glimpses into her own youth and that of her
daughter, which YAs will appreciate. AW.

The Lightless Sky: A Twelve-Year-OldRefugee’s Harrowing Escape fromAfghanistan and His ExtraordinaryJourney across Half the World.

With the intense national debate about
whether to accept refugees, this heartrending
story takes readers behind the headlines, with
the focus on the personal struggle of a desperate Afghan boy who flees the Taliban and U.S.
forces when his doctor father is killed in an
American air strike. From the start, the sorrow
is unforgettable, as when 12-year-old Gulwali’s
loving, widowed mother sends him and his
brother away from their rural home with the
command that he can never forget: “Be safe
and do not come back.” Then the brothers
are parted: Will they find each other? Gulwali
makes friends on the boat, traveling through
the Mediterranean and hidden in crowded
vehicles through 12 countries. He walks over
mountains and across borders, until, finally, he
finds political asylum in England. The close-up
detail is intense—a prison cell is warmer than
the cold outside—as Gulwali faces starvation
and filth and the virulent prejudice against
“bloody migrants.” The heartbreaking personal
drama stays with you, and so do the statistics:
today more than half the world’s refugees are
children. —Hazel Rochman

Stamped from the Beginning: TheDefinitive History of Racist Ideas inAmerica.

By Ibram X. Kendi.

Apr. 2016. 592p. Nation, $32.99 (9781568584638). 305.8.
This heavily researched yet easily readable
volume explores the roots and the effects of
racism in America. Kendi, assistant professor
of African American history at the University
of Florida, offers this history through chronologically arranged sections based on the lives of
five figures from American history: socially and
politically influential Puritan minister Cotton
Mather; President Thomas Jefferson; prominent abolitionist and social reformer William
Lloyd Garrison; civil rights activist and author
W. E. B. Du Bois; and political activist and
writer Angela Davis. Kendi posits that there is
a three-way argument happening between segregationists, who blame black people for racial
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